


Souls Collide

by CandyCravingDemon



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Abuse, Abused Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Makes Puns, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Needs a Hug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Whump, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Anxious Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Blood and Injury, Broken Promises, Chat Noir Being Chat Noir, Dark, Emotional Roller Coaster, Eventual Romance, Everyone's emotions are a complicated mess, F/M, Family Issues, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, Hot Mess Adrien Agreste, Hurt Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Bad At Summaries, Injury Recovery, Insecurity, Jealousy, Ladybug is drowning in guilt, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Luka will be introduced in later chapters, Major Character Injury, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Mostly self-indulgent angst, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Protectiveness, Regret, Self-Indulgent, Separation Anxiety, Slow Burn, Snake Luka Couffaine | Viperion, Vulnerability, Whump, sneaky snek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandyCravingDemon/pseuds/CandyCravingDemon
Summary: I’m not going to let anything else happen to you, Ladybug repeats again and again to herself, engraving it into her heart to make sure she never forgets it--to make sure he doesn’t have to spill another drop of blood for her sake; to make sure something like this will never happen again. It was her fault Chat had gotten hurt in the first place; her fault he was going to have that ugly scar forever engraved into his skin. It was her fault for everything, yet he still looked at her with those beautiful, shimmering, emerald eyes of his, like she was the most important thing in the world to him. He deserved so much better. Drowning in her own guilt, not wanting to risk putting Chat in any more danger, Ladybug seeks out the help of another miraculous user to help her fight akumas.Viperion was only supposed to be temporary. The more time he and Ladybug spent together, the more and more apparent to Chat that there’s unspoken chemistry between the two of them. Stricken with betrayal, in Chat’s eyes, the snake only increasingly feels more and more like his forever replacement. Too blinded by her own guilt, Ladybug doesn’t realize that she’s only been clawing her partner’s wound even deeper by trying to protect him.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Luka Couffaine & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 19
Kudos: 103





	1. What's Your Type?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is also cross-posted on Fanfiction.net, tags and summary subject to change.

Ladybug sucks in quick labored breaths, her hands clawing and balling up the fabric of her suit in her hands, knotting up the excess in anxiety. She tries to breathe but her lungs quiver and refuse the air she so desperately needs. It's like her lungs have forgotten how to function. It had all happened so fast. No matter how hard she tried to wrap her head around what had happened— _how_ it had happened; she couldn't. He had been perfectly fine. But then suddenly, he _wasn't_.

She runs her hands through her messy tangled hair, not caring that her hands are still slick with blood— _his_ blood. Her fingers catch in the knotted fray of her dark hair. Her eyes sting with warm tears, but she refuses to show weakness and let them fall. For the first time since she had gotten her miraculous, she was _scared, actually_ scared; terrified out of her mind, actually. Sure she'd had more than her fair share of close calls, but _every time_ , casting Miraculous Ladybug had always turned everything back to normal, fixing everything, no matter how badly she'd managed to fuck up. But this time, it _hadn't_. Chat's wounds hadn't healed, if anything, they had gotten worse.

"Wh- What am I going to do?! Why- Why didn't it work?! H- How am I going to fix this?" She all but whispers, her voice broken as she stutters, words barely even forming on her lips. Her breath hitches as her eyes are met by Chat's sparkling emerald.

Her chest _hurts_. Her heart is thrumming against her ribcage, battering and battering against the barrier of bones. She's convinced it'll burst through her chest cavity any second now. Blood roars through her ears while anxiety and adrenaline flood and clog up her veins and cloud up her rational thoughts.

One thought echoes and carves into the crevices of her brain, etched into every nerve, making her knees go weak and making her blood run cold. _It's my fault._

If she had been paying more attention, if she had reacted faster, if she had been a better partner, he wouldn't of had to shove her out of the way, he wouldn't of had to take the hit for her.

Seeing the pity in his eyes makes her stomach churn and feel heavy, knotting and twisting it with guilt. It's like someone had taken all of her vital organs and had plunged them into her stomach so they could corrode away into nothing more than sizzley goop.

"B- Bugaboo don't cry." Chat says meekly, stumbling as he attempts to pull himself up, outstretching a trembling hand to reach out and cup her face. He winces, letting out a yelp of pain, his arm pausing mid-reach as agony shoots up his lean frame. He instantly curls in on himself, sucking in a sharp breath, curse words knotted up in the back of his throat. Instinctively his hand falls to his abdomen, his teeth gnawing into his lips to distract himself from the white hot pain that seems to pulse through his chest. He feels sick to his stomach as his gloves become coated in garnet, the dark leather tainted and dripping off thick, sticky rivulets of crimson. He doesn't have the stomach to glance down at the wound himself, but he knows it's _deep_. He can feel the warmth and strength draining from his veins with each rushing drop of blood that oozes from his abdomen.

He squeezes his hands against the rift in his skin, pressure tight as he tries to conserve every drop of blood, but no matter how much he wills it to stop, the wound continues to gush garnet. He can feel it slipping through the cracks of his fingers, his very life essence seeping out of him with each passing second.

Glancing up through lidded eyes and gritted teeth, breaths conflicted and sharp, he scrunches up his face, trying to contain the pain that screams through every nerve. His eyes meet his partner's; stormy ocean blue, shimmering with something vulnerable and unfamiliar. He can tell she's trying to hold it together for his sake, but he knew her too well to not read between the lines of her 'steady' facade. He could easily read the concern that radiates from her, just by the ever-so-slight crease in her brows, and the way the corner of her lips were pulled into an uneasy frown.

"Don't worry, I'm fine M'lady. It's nothing a bandaid can't fix." The blond attempts, trying to keep his tone light and reassuring, a dopey smile forming across his lips.

Ladybug couldn't understand why there was no bitterness in his voice, or why he was still looking at her like she was only thing that mattered to him in the whole universe. The longer the silence between them drew out, the more and more she saw the expression slowly fade from his face, cat ears arching down as a somber, deflated look came across his features instead.

"H- How bad is it?" Chat finally manages, voice weak and breathy, as he looks to his partner with pleading eyes. Tentatively, he eases his hands off the wound, withholding the shudder that threatens to overtake him as pinpricks of pain jab into his side. He feels his stomach lurch into knots when he glances down at his gloves. The fabric is now soaked and dripping, almost as if it were alive itself and bleeding out.

Ladybug tries to stifle the gasp that hikes up from her lungs, eyes blown wide and pupils dilating in tenfold. She feels like she can't breathe, like oxygen was now a foreign currency to her body. She opens her mouth to say something, but she finds her words jumbled and caught in her throat; she's choking on them. She tries to meet his eyes, tries to focus on his face or anything other than the gut-churning reality of the gash in her partner's abdomen; but no matter how hard she tries, her eyes are still drawn right back to the wound in question.

It was worse than she had thought; _so_ much worse. She purses her lips, biting on the bottom one in hopes it'll stop quivering. She can't help the nausea that quakes her stomach as the coppery, pungent, stench of blood in the air, only seems to be _that much_ thicker.

The wound is deep. Around the puncture, a sharp, jagged slit of his skin had been ripped open, the leather around it torn to shreds.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to pull herself together. Her eyes feel raw, she doesn't how much longer she can hold back the floodgates. _It's my fault_ , she can't help but think, teeth gritted and jaw clenched as she tries to stop her bottom lip from quivering.

She had had nightmares of this exact scenario before, but those hadn't been _reality_. Everything was finally weighing in on her that this was painfully _real_ , and now, losing her _partner,_ her _best friend,_ her _anchor_ ; was also a very, very _real_ seemingly impossible, possibility.

She knows she needs to stay strong. For _him_. But she can feel herself breaking and falling apart, more and more cracks tearing away at what little solid foundation she has left. She knows there's only so much more lying to his face she can do before she breaks. He's _not okay_. No matter how many times she spews that he's fine, that isn't going to change anything. There's only so much sugar coating she can do before the words start to taste sour on her lips.

"Chat I-" she pauses, her breath hitching as her bluebell eyes shift to the ground in shame. "I'm sorry!" She whimpers, tears freely flowing down her pale cheeks. "This was my fault. I never should've-"

"Hey, it's not your fault." Chat interjects. "It was my choice to protect you from that akuma attack. I don't regret anything." Removing one hand from his side that had been applying pressure to the injury, he meekly takes her hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. Managing a coy smile he then says playfully, "Besides, haven't you heard? Tear stains are out of season. They don't suit you." He adds gently with a genuine, warm smile, wiping the stray tears that linger from her eyes.

He lets out a nervous laugh, pursing his lips as his gloves accidentally smear blood onto her face, just below her eyes. "Sorry, I forgot." He says innocently, even holding back a laugh, as if it had just been something as simple as frosting, rather than his own blood. He didn't care what the circumstances were, as long as he was with _her_ , everything was fine. Just being around her seemed to melt all of his problems away, even _if_ it was just for the briefest of moments.

If it had been under different circumstances, she may have found his little ploy amusing, but it only seemed to make the pit in her stomach deeper. The urgency of the matter crashing back into the forefront of her mind, she pushes Chat's hand away and presses his palm over the wound.

"Keep pressure on it." She says firmly, snapping out of her panicked frenzy, shaking her head and clearing her thoughts. Her partner wasn't going to get any better with her being a being a sobbing mess that couldn't get her act together. He needed medical attention, _pronto_. "Can you walk?"

"Of course, I'm fine as long I'm with you M'lady." Chat says almost cockily, as he shoots her an arrogant smirk, a wink sprinkled somewhere into the mix. He manages to bring himself up into a standing position on wobbly legs, though his knees buckle under his weight, head swimming like someone had knocked him upside the head with a bat. Not even seconds after, he stumbles backwards and slides back down the brick wall, pain scrunched up on his face as his ragged breaths condense into the frigid air.

"You're losing a lot of blood." Ladybug murmurs, more to herself than to him, as she crouches down next to him. "Quick, what's your type? I'm gonna try and get you to a hospital."

"Wh- Hey, what are you-" Chat yelps embarrassed, cheeks burning red, a soft, warm, pink tinge spilling past the edges of his mask. His emerald eyes go wide as Ladybug snakes one of her arms under his legs, beginning to pick him up bridal style, holding his form close to her chest. He call feel his pride oozing straight though his fingertips. Heat tearing and corroding through his face, he averts his eyes from her's, voice dying in his throat.

"Your type?" Ladybug reminds again, a bit more urgency in her tone, as she leaps onto the next rooftop, holding onto him like her life depends on it.

"Hmm..." he lets out a sound of acknowledgement, as he seems to go deep into thought, muddling it over in his head. "Well...hair as dark as night, pretty bluebell eyes that shimmer like the ocean, polka dots-"

" _BLOOD TYPE_ , Chaton."

"Oh." Chat glances down at his hands, turning them over, examining them. "Red."

The scarlet clad heroine lets out an annoyed sigh, and if she could, she'd pinch the bridge of her nose. Gosh, how much of an airhead was her mangy, alleycat of a partner?!

"I may not know my blood type, but I'm _O positive_ , I'm attracted to you." Chat says slyly, the wide grin on his face making it evident how proud of himself he was for coming up with the pun.

"Not now Chat." Ladybug all but growls under her breath. She didn't understand how he could remain so carefree and laidback right now. She was everything but having a fucking panic attack—and she wasn't even the one who had been injured!

They both let out a small noise of surprise as Ladybug's earrings begin to chime, warning of her inevitable detransformation soon. Ladybug grits her teeth, cursing her miraculous for giving out _now_ of all times. She nearly screams as another problematic issue screeches to a halt in the forefront of her brain. What were they going to do about Chat's identity? There was no way they could operate on him while he was still transformed, but they also couldn't risk revealing his alter ego either.

"Your earrings-" Chat starts, but cuts himself short, mid-sentence as his partner makes a sudden stomach-churning drop, landing raggedly onto a rooftop balcony. Ladybug nearly clips the edge and falls herself, having underestimated the distance between the two buildings. Her train of thought was racing a million miles a minute, pulse pounding up into her temples.

" _Ah_ \- _shit_..." The blond hisses in pain, immediately scrunching his eyes closed, white hot agony firing through his veins, the harsh jostle from the landing, practically sending his already-reeling head into vertigo. He nearly has the breath knocked out his lungs when to further the matter, Ladybug roughly sets him down, practically all but flat-out dropping him. "H- Hey! Where are you going?" The blond calls distraught, breath tangled up in his lungs as he sees the scarlet clad heroine dart off, his hands still desperately clutching his abdomen, the pain nearly making him sick to his stomach.

"This'll only take a second Kitty, I'll be _right_ back, _I promise_." The bluenette calls over her shoulder, some of her inner anxiety manifesting itself with a waver in her voice.

Clawing her way over to the glass, screen door, she frantically pounds at it, hoping to god that someone's here. She continues to bang her fists against the glass with seemingly reckless abandon, occasionally stopping to cup her hands around her eyes so she can peer inside. Disheartened, and nearly turning to leave, Ladybug's caught off guard when the door is thrown open with a loud thud, and a sudden shrill voice erupts behind her; though as annoying at it was, Ladybug couldn't have been more relieved.

" _Ladybug_? It's about _time_! Do you know how _long_ it's been since you've asked for Queen Bee's help-"

"Chloe, _please_ , not right now." The bluenette all but begs.

The blonde girl immediately goes silent upon seeing the distress in the heroine's face, something in her eyes screaming that something was wrong. She could even hear the anxiety that was thickly laced into her tone. She also didn't miss the way Ladybug's hands were trembling, or how the girl's face was nearly as pale as a ghost's.

"Is that blood on your face? And on your hands?" Chloe asks slowly, a bit of fear and hesitation lingering in her tone as she points at Ladybug's hands. Her eyes drift from the slate haired girl's fingertips, up to her face. "Are you okay?" She asks, though she already knows the answer.

"It's Chat. He got hurt really badly by the last akuma we went against. I already cast my miraculous, b- but it didn't heal him. So please, I need your help." Ladybug blurts quickly, words tumbling out of her mouth faster than she can even process that she's saying them.

" _Yes_! Queen Bee is always at your service!" Chloe cries triumphantly, holding her hand out expectantly, waiting for her miraculous like a greedy child. Her fingers twitch in giddy anticipation. "You need another sidekick, _right_?" The girl dramatically tosses her ponytail over her shoulder, giving the dark haired girl a smug expression.

"Sidekick? He's not a sidekick, he's my _partner_ \- uh- wait, _NO_! That's not why I'm here." Ladybug cries a bit harshly, feeling pressed for time as her earrings give their final warning beeps. "I need your Chat Noir costume, and a change of clothes."

"Ooh I have this really cute blouse you can borrow!"

" ** _NO_**! I mean, no, not for me, for _Chat_." Ladybug corrects herself hastily, her already dwindling patience stretched thin.

"I don't _have_ anything that's gonna fit _him_." Chloe says shaking her head, brows creased, and eyes narrowed.

"C'mon you have to have _something_!" Ladybug all but demands, the desperation in her voice evident, the heroine wanting more than anything to just pull her own hair out. Trying to talk to Chloe was like talking to a brick wall.

"I mean, I might have something of Adrien's around here _somewhere_." The blonde says nonchalantly with a haphazard shrug; the statement a bit more open-ended than the bluenette would've liked.

"Please and thank you!" Ladybug calls as she quickly darts into another room, slamming her back against the door and locking it, just in the nick of time.

The room radiates in a flash of pink as her transformation releases, her kwami collapsing into her palms. "I'm sorry to push you like this Tikki, but it's an emergency." Marinette blurts apologetically as she rummages through her bag for a cookie. Fingers clasping around one, she quickly puts it in her kwami's hands. She feels a bit guilty, but she urges the little bug to eat faster as she paces in anticipation. She had so many questions she wanted to ask her Kwami; like had this situation ever happened to any previous miraculous holders? Had a previous Ladybug ever had a Miraculous Cure fail and not undo all the damage? Would Chat's Kwami feel the same repercussions Chat did? She frantically shook her head, taking a deep breath trying to clear some of the tension in her shoulders. She'd figure it out later, now wasn't the time or place.

After getting approval from her Kwami once the little bug had finished the pastry, Marinette called out, " _Tikki, spots on_!". And with another blinding, radiant, flash of pink, her alter ego re-emerged. Stepping out of the room, the dark haired girl scanned the area for Chloe, but the blonde was nowhere to be found.

She taps her foot impatiently, stealing constant glances at the clock tacked up onto the wall, the seconds ticking by so quickly, it was like literal granules of sand slipping through her fingers. Being able to _hear_ each individual cog shift and click, did nothing to calm her nerves, only making it that much more apparent how much time she was wasting. _Come on Chloe_ , she thinks irritatedly to herself.

What she knows only could have been a few mere minutes, feels like an eternity and a half. Without even thinking, she snatches the bundle of clothes from the blonde's hands the second Chloe returns from her closet. Chloe's left standing there stunned, as the scarlet clad heroine grabs everything from her hands and bolts. Grateful, Ladybug turns and shoots an apology over her shoulder, promising to give the girl something back in return for the major favor. Legs seemingly reimbursed with newfound drive and vigor, she runs towards the door leading to the balcony, the clothes bundled tightly in her arms.

The second she lays her eyes on Chat, she immediately feels an overwhelming wave of guilt wash over her, like someone had decided to toss a bunch of skipping stones in her stomach. It nearly stops her dead in her tracks. He looked so vulnerable and helpless; eyes clenched so tightly shut, it was as if he were trying to block out the very _existence_ of the world around him. His normally, wild and fluffy hair, was wilted and limp against his forehead, clinging to his skin from sweat. His chest raggedly rose and fell, frigid air materializing as hazy puffs as his breath tainted it. It was as if just _breathing_ , was a horrid, and troublesome task his body struggled to accomplish. In this moment, she couldn't get over now much he reminded her of an angel who had fallen from grace.

He flinches violently when she reaches out to touch him, muscles instantly jolting, and eyes flashing open. She can see the almost animalistic terror that graces his serpent green irises, the few seconds it takes for him to readjust and process what's going on. His clouded mind and half-lidded and unfocused eyes, taking just a fragment too long, in recognizing it's her.

In this brief moment where she had caught him with his guard down—without that dopey smile, without that almost too-cheery attitude, without that confidence and cockiness that radiated he was on top of the world—Ladybug saw something. For just a flicker of a second, she saw something broken from beneath the mask he always wore, an almost longing, hollowness that resonated much deeper than the skin. This brief crack of vulnerability, with the way his muscles spasmed at her gentle touch, the way his feline ears had swiveled back instantaneously, the way he had froze up in fear; staring at her like a deer caught in headlights, the way his hands had instantly flung up in front of his face as he curled in on himself.

She almost flinches backwards herself, drawing her hand back as if she'd grazed the edge of a hot stove. Her brows can't help but furrow at his out-of-place reaction, time seemingly stilled as she tries to process what exactly had just happened. Maybe she was reading into it too much. Maybe it was just her over-bearing anxiety nipping at her thoughts. Maybe it was just the cautious, caring, Marinette side of her that was trying to make something out of nothing. But it felt like there was something else going on, something else he hadn't been telling her, something more than just the pain from his injury.

"Easy, it's me, Chaton." Ladybug coos gently, trying again, as she brushes his bangs away from his face. Careful not to shift or shake him too much, she picks him back up in her arms, still just as surprised as the first time, at how light his lean, yet muscular form is. She can feel him shivering in her arms, every one of his muscles quivering from the cold.

"Oh, L.B.," Chat Noir says, perking up a bit as he peers up at her, though there's still something solemn that lingers in the tone of his voice. "I was beginning to think you were going to leave me in a cardboard box for someone else to find."

She winces at his words even though she knows he's only kidding. "I could never do that to you Chat, you may be a mangy alleycat, but you're _my_ stray Kitty. So I'm gonna take care of you. I'm not gonna let anything else happen to you."

_I'm not going to let anything else happen to you_ , she repeats again to herself, engraving it into her heart to make sure something like this will _never_ happen again. She couldn't believe it had taken her this long to realize just how many times Chat had taken hits for her, just how many times _he_ had taken the fall so she wouldn't have to; she couldn't believe it had taken something of _this caliber_ to **open** her eyes for God's sake!

Nearly out of breath, lungs huffing and puffing like she were on the bout of an asthma attack, she just barely, manages to skid to a stop before reaching the entrance of the hospital, underestimating the reaction time of the automated doors.

"Hello, can I help you-" The receptionist begins in a perky tone, but is caught off guard as Ladybug dashes past her desk without a second glance, motion swooshing the paper's straight off her desk and sending them flying. "Ack- Hey! You can't just-"

"Sorry! It's an emergency!" Ladybug calls over her shoulder flustered.

A small noise of surprise escapes her mouth when she hears Chat laughing, feeling his chest and his stomach shake gently in her arms, a grin stretching across his face like a drawn back rubber band. "M'lady did you see her face a-and the papers!" He says, a soft joyous laugh of warmth spilling deep from his sternum, his arms briefly coming up to wave all around them to simulate the papers. She can't stop the brief smile that graces her lips. Hearing his laugh was like seeing a pinprick of light shining in the darkness.

She hooks a sharp right, dashing down a wide corridor with dozens of rooms lining either side. She scans each one as she passes, hoping to find an empty one. Nearly running past it, and having to backtrack, she finally finds one, at room 124. Closing the thick, beyond-heavy door behind her and clicking the lock into place, she carefully sets her partner down on the edge of one of the beds, gingerly handing him the bundle of spare clothes.

"Change into these so it's easier for the surgeons to operate on you, and so we don't risk anyone finding out your identity—also so you don't risk hurting your Kwami by staying transformed for such a long state." She starts, beginning to unfold the fabric and lay each individual piece of clothing out on the bed, not even looking up at Chat once as she spoke.

"I don't mind if you know, M'lady." Chat chimes weakly, cracking that stupid dopey grin of his again. The scarlet clad heroine can't help but roll her eyes. "Don'tcha wanna know who your charming devil-of-a-partner is behind this mask?" He continues, voice charismatic and silky-sweet as he forms a 'picture frame' with his gloved fingers, framing his eyes as he winks at her, a cocky smirk adorning his lips.

" _Devil is right_." She mutters under her breath, just quiet enough Chat doesn't catch it. She can't help but pinch the bridge of her nose.

She wants to scream at him, to tell him to get his shit together, to take this seriously, to quit playing around considering how much is at stake right now.

_In...Out...In...Out._ She takes several deep breaths, trying to calm her nerves, trying to stop the jittering of her fingers, trying to stop the way worse-case-scenarios are crashing through her mind like a derailed freight train.

She's scared to death that her partner's gonna die right in front of her eyes; that he's just gonna keel over any second now; because the longer they spend talking, the worse his wound is going to get, and that's more and more time that they're not gonna get back.

"We _can't_ know each other's identities." She says firmly, looking into his tired, serpent green eyes. "You **_know_** that."

She knows she shouldn't take out her own muddled fear and anger on him. She knows she has _no right_ to snap at him. She knows deep down he has to be fucking terrified—hell, she can feel her own heart thrashing against her ribcage like her heart's running a fucking marathon. She knows this is just a facade to help keep himself calm. She knows it's just his way of dealing with the situation, cracking jokes and flirting with her—keeping himself grounded, giving himself something to focus on to keep from letting his panic run rampant. _She knows_! But that doesn't stop her brain from running on autopilot.

"Why not? Who cares!" Chat pouts, voice full of hurt. "It can be a secret, just between the two of us."

"You _know_ _why_ Chaton," Ladybug says a bit solemnly as she reaches up to caress his cheek, though there's a certain emotionlessness to her tone and her gesture, as if she's had to rinse and repeat this very scenario hundreds of times before. She can't help but purse her lips as she feels Chat pull away from her.

"Will you be able to stand and change on your own?" Ladybug asks, concern and worry laced on her face as she eyes his wound again, noticing the surrounding skin has formed a swelled lump around the puncture and is saturated thickly in blood. She swallows thickly, feeling a bit faint just looking at it. It's bound to feel like dozens of knives rippling up his nerves.

"I'll be _fine_." Chat says a bit moodily, cat ears drawn back, as he uses his hands to push himself off the edge of the bed. He wobbles as he's brought to his feet, having to quickly clamp a hand at his mouth to stop from losing the contents of his stomach. He can't help the wave of vertigo that suddenly crashes down on him, causing him to stagger backwards into the frame of the bed with a thud. "I'm f-fine," he repeats, his own words sounding garbled in his head.

Regaining a normal, conscious-aware state of mind for just a fraction of a second, he thinks to close the room divider curtain, and with that, he hastily yanks on the fabric, bringing forth a wall between himself and his partner.

Ladybug can't help but feel a bit guilty for how harsh and stern she had been with him. He was hurting and wasn't in the right state of mind, she should've just played along with his little charade for a bit. It wasn't like he was going to remember much of this after all of the anesthesia anyway. She chews her bottom lip in worry as she watches the lanky silhouette of her partner through the curtain.

"Claws...claws out." Chat calls out weakly, having to search his muddled mind for the right vocal cue.

With a bright flash of blinding green illuminating the room as his transformation releases, Adrien nearly topples to the floor like a rag doll, feeling like someone had taken a vacuum and sucked the very life out of him. What had only been a downpour of pain, had suddenly surged into a raging tsunami; pure white, hot, agony washing over him the second he had released his transformation, amplifying its strength by thousands of measures.

His legs were so unsteady and wobbling so badly, it was a wonder he didn't trigger an earthquake. His knees buckle beneath his weight, so without even thinking, he falls back against the bed, struggling to breath, lungs refusing to cooperate, and his eyes feeling like any second now, they'd pop out of his skull with how rapidly his heart was pounding up into his ears and vibrating up into his temples. Each and every individual nerve entangled up through his guts and connected to his spinal cord, is **_screaming_** bloody murder at him.

" _S- Shit_." He chokes, lunging forward to catch his kwami; his senses are dulled and his ears are ringing, and he's having trouble trying to get his body to react the way he wants it to; but somehow, he manages to catch the little black ball of fur in his hands, though he tumbles to the floor himself in the process. His teeth dig into his bottom lip, desperately trying to suppress the cry of pain that threatens to spew from his lips.

He cups Plagg's small form in the palms of his hands, taking his thumbs and stroking the kwami's soft fur. Plagg feels warm in his hands, the dull vibrations of purring shooting up through his fingertips. He holds the small cat against his chest, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments, thankful he can feel the kwami's rhythmic breathing brushing in and out.

"Sorry Plagg." Adrien whispers, gentle breath blowing each strand of fur on the kwami's back. "Didn't mean to drag you into my reckless actions too."

"Don't worry Kid, we're in this together. You did good." Plagg husks back weakly. "I just need a nap and some camembert..." he trails off, falling unconscious in the blond's hands, curling up into a tight ball of floof.

"In- In this together." The blond murmurs aloud, tasting the coopery tang of blood in the back of his throat. Edges of his vision corroded in darkness, and fingers going numb, he pitifully struggles to pull himself back up onto his feet. His arms quiver from the tension as he puts all of his weight into his wrists, the bones and muscles in his legs having seemingly melted into mush. With limp, flimsy arms, seemingly having the weight of lead, with one hand he manages to slip on the Chat Noir mask and ears Ladybug had borrowed from Chloe. He was running off the fumes of what had been pure adrenaline; the thin trickle of energy surging through his veins, the only thing keeping him going right now.

He begins to edge up the hem of his shirt to change into the hoodie Ladybug had given him, but nearly finds himself sick when the fabric of his shirt clings, seemingly merged to his skin due to the saturation of blood. Biting the inside of his cheek and clenching his eyes shut to keep from looking at the wound in question, with one quick, swift, motion—like ripping off a bandaid—he slides the shirt up, off over his head, and carelessly tosses it to the ground. A shudder traces all the way up his spine, almost like a bad omen whispering his name.

His body was on its last leg, fighting to keep him conscious, and fighting to keep blood and oxygen pumping through him. His stomach felt like it was on fire, and his lower abdomen throbbed with every pounding heartbeat. He cups his hands over the gaping gash in his lower flank, sucking in a sharp breath when he feels sticky warmth seeping through his fingers. It was getting harder and harder to breathe, harder and harder to push his body to keep going when it was already over it's limit, harder and harder to keep the agony at bay, harder and harder to fight off the ebbing darkness that called him to sleep.

"M'Lady-" He wheezes, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. One hand outstretched, the other desperately clasped around his flank, he takes one final lunge forward towards the divider curtain before collapsing onto the floor, curling into himself, breathing harsh and ragged, beads of sweat dripping from the sides of his face.

Ladybug flinches back violently when a bloody handprint suddenly trails down the off-white curtain, ivory fabric instantly stripped of its innocence with the stain of wet crimson. The cataclysmic crash that accompanies it a few seconds later nearly has her crawling out of her skin.

" **C- CHAT!** " She cries hysteric, nearly diving on her knees to get to her partner, pulse increasing tenfold as her heart pounds against her ribcage like a sledgehammer. She rips open the curtain in desperation, nearly tearing the fabric down from the hooks that uphold it.

The second she lays eyes on her partner, she's convinced she somehow swallowed a whole-ass fucking watermelon in the span of 3 seconds with the weight that's settled in her stomach. She feels like she's just taken a sucker punch to the gut. His face is ghastly pale and drenched in sweat, hair fastened limply to his forehead and pain etched into every muscle of his face. A thin rivulet of garnet dribbles from the corner of his parted lips, like a rose blossoming from crisp snow. She almost could've swore up and down that someone had taken a vacuum and sucked the very essence out of her partner. The cat ears fastened in his golden hair are crooked and askew, just like her frazzled state of mind.

Tremors wrack her hands, shaking in sharp jerks as her pupils are blown wide, heart pounding faster and faster up into her ears. She begins to hyperventilate, breathing getting shallower and shallower as her hands grip the sides of her face.

_Fuck_. She didn't know what to do. Even though he'd just changed into it, blood was already seeping through the hoodie, leaving a growing dark, splotchy patch onto the maroon fabric. She was just a normal—well _almost_ _normal_ —teenager for crying out loud. A clumsy dork who'd lose her head if it wasn't attached to her; someone who slept through alarms and couldn't even make it to class on time if she were left to her own devices; someone who was a flustered, indecisive, train wreck. She couldn't even properly confess her feelings to boy she loved—or for that matter, even _decide_ who she actually liked. She wasn't supposed to have to make decisions like this. She wasn't supposed to have the people she cared about suffer like this. She wasn't supposed have to handle everything on her own. She'd been _thrown into_ the role of Ladybug. She didn't get a guidebook for dummies™ on all of the responsibilities that came with being a superhero, she didn't get an instruction manual or a step-by-step how-to on what to do. She wasn't trained or equipped to deal with situations like this, she had grew up kneading bread and absentmindedly burning her fingers on too-hot baking sheets for god's sake! Not how to make quick, rational life-or-death decisions; not how to ignore her fear and get over herself; not how to stay calm and grounded even in the worst of scenarios.

" _Fuck_ ," she breathes. Frantically shaking her head, she slaps her hands against her cheeks as hard as she can. "SNAP OUT OF IT!" She cried. Her skin stings with a dull rhythm of pain, handprints glowing almost as red as her suit are imprinted across her cheekbones. She absolutely _could not_ panic. She bites down hard onto her lips until she tastes blood. She needed to get a grip. Chat needed her now more than ever. He trusted her with his heart and his soul, and was counting on her with every fiber of his being. His Kwami too, was relying on her to protect his charge.

Letting out a sharp breath, she decompresses some of the tension in her shoulders. Getting back in control of herself, she hoists Chat up into her arms and carefully stows Plagg's small form into a pouch on her side.

She runs down the pristine white hallways, head jerking so frantically back and forth as she looked for a doctor or a nurse, it was wonder she didn't get whiplash. "Please! Someone! We need help!" She yells in anguish, tears beginning to form in the corners of her eyes. "SOMEONE, ANYONE, _PLEASE_!" She cries out in desperation. Like seeing water in an oasis in a scorching desert, Marinette can't explain the relief that pours through her veins when she spots a man with a long, trailing white coat, violet latex gloves adorned on his hands.

"Sir!" She yells, panting raggedly as she plants herself to a stop in front of him. "It's M- My partner- Chat- He-" She rasps quickly between breaths, tears streaming down her cheeks. She stumbles over her words, mind racing five times faster than her mouth, lips unable to keep up. It's like her words are all caught up in her throat like she'd swallowed her tongue and forgotten how to speak.

With one glance down at the unconscious boy limp in Ladybug's arms, the doctor immediately rushes over to a nurse, face stern as he barks out orders at her. Within seconds, Ladybug hears that same nurse chime over the intercom, "CODE BLUE! Incoming priority patient, west wing, oncology ward."

"I need a gurney stat!" The doctor orders. "He'll need a blood transfusion and an IV drip pronto! Go ahead and get the anesthesia ready and prepare an analgesic injection with naproxen to limit inflammation in his lower abdominal region. Someone page Dr. Anaheim, he needs immediate medical attention and requires surgical care ASAP!"

Ladybug's head is spinning as she tries to keep up with all of the medical terminology the doctor spews out. In some instances he may as well of been speaking a foreign language to her. The next thing she knows, Chat's _ripped_ from her arms and haphazardly thrown into and strapped down to a gurney, and within seconds he's vanished down the long corridor, a team of doctors sprinting the cart down to the operating room. She can't help but feel as if they'd also ripped out a piece of _her_ when they'd taken him away from her. Her chest hurts and aches, blame and guilt oozing through every cell of her body.

She stands there for a moment, still, almost paralyzed. It had all happened so fast, she can't process what exactly had just happened. She looks down at her hands; they're trembling so badly it's as if she's in an etch-a-sketch and someone's trying shake the box to erase her. She swallows thickly, a sob getting hitched in her throat as she turns her hands over and looks at the blood that stains them. _His_ blood. Floodgates wide open, tears freely stream down her face, ebbing from her melancholy bluebell eyes. Her bottom lip quivers as she falls to her knees, hands furiously swiping at her eyes trying to wipe away the tears. She was making a scene. She was supposed to be strong and invulnerable to everyday civilians, she was supposed to be a beacon of hope who never faltered—but she couldn't stop herself. No matter how hard she willed herself to stop crying, to get up off the floor, the more tears that seemed to trail down her face, and the heavier her legs seemed to become. People were beginning to stare. Right now more than anything, she wished she wasn't put on such a high pedestal, because after all, no matter how much people idolized her, behind the mask, no matter how much she wanted to deny it, she was just an ordinary girl. There was only so much emotional trauma she could take. She was only human after all.

"Chat Noir, _I'm sorry_." She hiccups between ugly sobs, face buried in her guilt and her blood-stained gloves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So basically, this was just an angsty fic idea that I impulsively wrote tbh. Part of this was inspired from a tumblr post lol. I think I’ll probably continue this and make it a multi-chapter. Please lmk if you guys would be interested in seeing more?
> 
> Also, shameless plug because why not?—-follow my insta @candycravingdemon


	2. Lost In You

Ladybug desperately paces back and forth, billions of thoughts racing through her head, jittering around and pinging into her brain like fireflies trapped in a jar. Dark hallowed circles have settled beneath her eyes, dark gray-ish blue seemingly only brought out even more by the bright red hue of her suit. Gritting her teeth, she roughly throws herself down into the worn waiting room chair in an attempt to make herself calm down. She thrums her fingers against her knees, legs bouncing as she finds herself still dwelling on the matter, adrenaline still trickling through her system.

Tikki had been right of course, and she _knew_ that; It wouldn’t do her any good working herself up—Chat’s condition was something that was beyond her control, regardless of whether she stayed in the waiting room, regardless of whether or not she sat here letting guilt and anxiety gnaw away at her insides. After she had rushed Plagg off to Master Fu, she had dragged herself back to the hospital, ignoring how badly her muscles had ached and how tired she was. Tikki had insisted that she should go home and get some rest, but she’d refused. There was no way she’d be able to rest easy knowing that her partner was undergoing a surgery that may very well of meant life or death.

Ladybug frantically shakes her head trying to clear her thoughts, throwing herself back up onto her feet. No matter how much her body fought her, she _needed_ to be up and moving. She couldn’t just sit around waiting for something to happen. She begins to make her way up to the front desk and ask about the progress of the surgery again, but thinks better of it when she see’s the receptionist already glaring at her before she even gets anywhere near the podium. Rightfully so, she supposes, when she glances up at the clock tacked up onto the wall and realizes she’s already asked five times within the last twenty minutes.

_You need to calm down Marinette_ , she’s sure Tikki would say if she were here and able to speak to her. It had been _hours_ since Chat had been admitted into the ER, and it was well past four in the morning now, skies stricken ebony, occasionally illuminated blinding aqua from vicious cracks of lightning. Water streamed down the glass window panes in thick rivulets, the downpour of rain thrashing against the building like thousands of tiny bullets trying to eat their way through the bricks.

Spaced out, limbs heavy, and eyelids even heavier, she stumbles her way into the bathroom, nearly crashing head-first into the door since she was so caught up in her thoughts. She stands in front of the sink, opting to splash some frigid water onto her face in an attempt to ‘jumpstart’ a bit of energy into her system again, hoping to shake some of the tired haze that clouds her brain. She flinches back and shudders when the cool droplets strike her face.

She was really starting to feel the effects of having pushed herself and her body to the limit; the heart-pounding, almost nauseating, buzz of adrenaline from before had long-since dwindled down, on its last legs as a crash began to settle deep into her bones. She’d downed a few cups of coffee, initially thinking she could be up for **_days_** with how buzzy and good it felt, caffeine jittering through her veins—but that thought had long since passed; here she was now, all of her effort just put into not falling flat on her face. Her deep gnawing anxiety and guilt for Chat was about the only thing keeping her going, like a lost dog diligently awaiting the return of their master.

A heavy sigh brushes past her lips, shoulders hiking up as the breath breaks out of her lungs. Fabric now wet and heavy, she peers down at her gloves, which are now soaked and dripping off water. When she glances down at her hands, something in her mind slips and like a wild bull taunted by a wavering cloth, a vivid, searing, memory comes crashing into the forefront of her brain. In hysterics, she frantically flinches back, nearly stumbling backwards from the force of her sudden movement. The image of _his_ blood on her gloves flashes through her mind, the experience forcefully imprinted into every fiber of her being as she relives that very moment over again.

The next thing she knows, her hands are shaking and suddenly she can’t breathe. For the briefest of moments, she wonders if her lungs have detached and grown roots, having become more plant than human, because she swears she can’t seem to remember how to take oxygen in; like carbon dioxide is the only thing her body knows. Her pupils are blown wide as she begins to hyperventilate, panic settling in as her fingers are drawn and knotted up in her hair.

The blood from her hands was long-since gone and had instantly disappeared after she’d detransformed for the the first time, but that hadn’t done anything for her mentally since _everything_ about the experience was still fresh and branded into her mind, scalding echoes still reverberating in the crevices of her brain. She could still see the deep garnet that had stained her ruby gloves, she could still feel the warmth and the stickiness of his blood on her fingertips, could still feel the weight of him in her arms, could still hear his shallow breaths that ached for something more. Before she even realizes it, tears are streaming down her cheeks again. It isn’t until she tastes the salt on her lips that she recognizes she’s crying, warm tears bringing her back to reality.

She closes her eyes and exhales slowly, hands perched down against the porcelain sink so tightly, her knuckles were going white. Head hanging low, she lets out a heavy, shaky breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, casting out some of the tension in her chest.

Quickly, she swipes at her eyes, just as quick to get rid of her tears as they had appeared. She swallows thickly, looking up into the mirror at herself. The heroine staring back her was a disheveled, disgusting, _mess_. Dark circles were engraved under her eyes, exhaustion having fully settled deep into her bones, eyes brimming with an unforetold sadness, seemingly dead to the world. Her hair was a frayed, tangled mess, with strands of hair from her pigtails stuck up in every which way, almost as if she had just been tossed off of the world’s fastest roller coaster mid-ride—though, she supposes that wasn’t too far from truth, considering the _emotional_ roller coaster of ups and downs she’d been on in just the last couple of hours.

What would she even say to Chat after he made it out of surgery? ‘ _I’m sorry I kind of almost accidentally got you killed_ ’ or ‘ _Whoops! Sorry you’re gonna have to be hospitalized for a bit. Haha my bad_ ’ or maybe she’d even come outright and say ‘ _Sorry you got stuck with such a worthless partner like me_ ’.

Was he going to be mad at her? Would he look at her with an unspoken disappointment in his eyes now? Would he blame her for the permanent ugly scar on his abdomen? It _was_ her fault after all. It was her fault he had gotten hurt; her fault that she hadn’t gotten him to a hospital sooner; No matter how she picked it apart and tried to rationalize what had happened, _all of it_ , was _her_ fault. If she had just been more observant, if she had just reacted faster, _if she had just-_

She unconsciously grits her teeth, jaws clenched so tightly it was a wonder that her teeth didn’t shatter from the pressure. She frantically shakes her head, trying to clear away all of the almost _deafening_ thoughts that roar and flood through her brain. Whatever happened next, whether he resented her or if he decided he didn’t want to be Chat Noir anymore because of her, she deserved it. Whatever happens, happens, she decides. If their friendship ended up hanging in the balance, then so be it, he had every right to be angry at her. He would probably be better off without someone like her anyway. He deserved so much more; He deserved someone who could live up to be more than she herself could ever dream to be.

Taking one final deep breath, Ladybug recomposes herself, and forces a smile on her lips, no matter how much it hurts. Carefully, she combs through her hair with her fingers, wincing at the knots and tangles that catch. Stepping back out into the lobby, she makes her way back up to the receptionist, still trying to hold together that smile. “Any updates?” She asks, her voice a little more unsteady than she’d like it to be.

The receptionist typed at her keyboard, fingers flying across and punching keys like it was second nature, her eyes never once having to glance down at the letters. She hums for a moment, the clicking and clacking coming to an abrupt stop as her eyes flick back and forth, reading something.

Ladybug nearly leans forward bouncing on the tips of her toes in anxious anticipation. She has to bite her tongue and remind herself to be patient when the receptionist’s eyes just keep seemingly flicking back and forth for rows upon rows of text. She chews on the insides of her cheek, jaw clenched. Why was it taking it so long? Did something happen? Was Chat okay? Right as Ladybug begins to open her mouth to say something, a question already beginning to form on her lips, worst case scenarios practically spewing out of her ears at this point, the receptionist’s eyes suddenly flick up and meet her’s. Ladybug’s lips instantly purse shut as she swallows the hard lump in her throat. Squeezing her eyes shut, she braces herself for the worst.

“Knock that look off your face, honey.” The receptionist says playfully, warmth in her tone. “He’s alright.” She smiles with a welcoming grin, small wrinkles ebbing at the corner of her eyes.

Ladybug stands there for a moment, a blank look on her face as she still tries to process the new information, her mind so clouded over from exhaustion that her brain was lagging like an old internet explorer tab, cogs in her brain turning in that seemingly infinite loop, neurons failing to make the right connections.

_He’s alright_?

**_He’s alright!_**

Ladybug’s legs suddenly go weak from the almost euphoric relief, wobbling like jelly. Her knees feel like they could buckle under her weight at any given second. She lets out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, an enormous weight suddenly lifted from her chest. She laughs, a gentle sound that reverberates up her throat, corners of her lips pulled up into a smile as tears form in the corners of her eyes. _Thank. God._ she murmurs to herself, grateful. Her bluebell eyes shimmer a bit brighter, her form visibly more relaxed as the tension in her muscles fade.

“He got out of the operating room with a stabilized condition about a half hour ago. He’s currently in recovery and just regained consciousness a few minutes ago. They’re transferring him to a private room on the top floor right now. As one of the heroes of Paris, he’ll receive around-the-clock medical care with the best treatment and supplies the hospital has to offer, in hopes that he’ll have a quick recovery—though, since we can’t risk the exposure of his identity, there will be restricted clearance on his visitors. Of course as his partner, you’ll be granted access to visit him, but aside from you, that’s where matters get...complicated... since we have no way to contact any relatives or close friends without the risk of exposing his civilian identity.”

Ladybug nods slowly, her expression beginning to fade with the more and more she’s told. With this new revelation, she can feel the start of anxiety beginning to clot up around her heart again. She tries to imagine if their roles were reversed and if she were in Chat’s position right now, how she would even _begin_ to go about trying to explain her injury to her parents? It doesn’t ease her conscience any when she realizes she can’t come up with _any_ feasible reason. And not being able to have her friends to come visit her?? This was definitely an issue they’d have to figure out at some point.

“He’s probably gonna be pretty out of it since he still has heavy doses of anesthesia and painkillers in his system, but you’re welcome to visit him now if you like.” The receptionist continues as she scribbles down the room number on a slip of paper. As she hands it to the heroine, she offers the scarlet clad girl a gentle reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.

“T- Thanks.” Ladybug half mumbles, half stutters. Feet leading her down the wide corridor, making her way towards the elevator, billions of thoughts erupt through her head like baking soda and vinegar. She needed to figure out _right now_ what exactly she was gonna say to Chat. Would he remember their last conversation, how she had been a snappy jerk to him? Would he resent her for all of the pain he’s having to go through? Would he hate her for being so selfish? What was the first thing _he_ was going to say when he saw her?

Heavy elevator doors swooshing shut behind her, with some hesitation, she pushes for the button on the top floor. She knows it’s wrong, and knows she shouldn’t be thinking like this, but some deep part of her hopes that other people call for the elevator so it takes longer for her to get there, giving her more time to organize her thoughts. Or maybe some fans will want her to stop so they can get a few pictures with her or an autograph or two. Or she hopes that maybe the elevator will get stuck somewhere between floors; all because she’s terrified of what her partner will think of her.

She watches as the indicator for the floor number continues to seamlessly climb; with no interruptions and no signs of a rickety emergency. She can hear her heart pounding up into her ears like a jackhammer, thrashing into her chest. She nearly drowns in the roaring blood and her almost deafening pulse. Her hands begin to tremble in sharp jerks. Desperate to get herself back in control, her fingers clasp tightly, too tightly, against the edges of the scrap of paper in her hands, edges crumpling up as she keeps tugging on it tighter and tighter.

_Just breathe_. She reminds herself, taking a moment to steady the rise and fall of her chest, to remind her lungs that she _isn’t_ running a marathon. Heart leaping up into her her throat and butterflies fluttering against the insides of her stomach, she wills herself to step off the elevator as it emits a final ding and the doors slide open. She can’t help but think the air up here feels almost suffocating, like someone was trying to smother her with a pillow. Closing her eyes and letting out one final, shaky exhale to clear her mind, she glances down at the scrap of paper in her hands. It’s wrinkled with creases all over it, edges torn from how roughly she had been holding it. The paper felt almost as fragile and as vulnerable as she did.

Finally making her way to the room that matches the number written on the now battered piece of paper, she finds her legs unbearably heavy, muscles stiff like she’d just been dunked in a vat of concrete. She stops just outside the room, something in her resolve crumbling. Her partner was just beyond these doors. The only thing standing between them was this open,door archway. She felt like she was being physically torn apart inside, feeling like a doll two children were clawing and fighting for, each tugging at her arms like their life depended on it. Part of her wanted to sprint full-force past that doorway and wrap her partner in the tightest embrace she could manage, to hold on and never let go; to spew out hopeless apologies one right after the other until her voice was raw, telling him just how important he was to her. But another piece of her had her heart racing and her lungs quivering, fearful of what her partner was going to say, scared of what he was going to remember.

Despite how much her mind is screaming at her to turn back while she still has the chance, her heart pushes her forward. Whatever happens, happens, she decides. The damage was done, and there was no going back. She needed to own up to what she had caused. Pursing her lips, she hesitantly strides into the room.

At first, he doesn’t notice her; tired eyes glazed over and out of focus as he sits slumped over, staring at something off in the distance. Ladybug can’t help but feel a pang of guilt when she notices all of the wires and IV cables hooked up to him; Too many—more than she’d care to count. Dozens of them wind and tangle up around his arms like snakes, ends fed into his wrists and dripping their poison into his veins. The tight-lipped frown on his face was unmistakable. He looked lost as he gazed out at the world beyond the windows, out at the the soft, glowing Parisian city lights blurred by rain. There was an air of melancholy about him like he was a trapped soul left to wander or like a poor stray puppy who had been kicked a few times too many. Seeing his face devoid of that vibrance and energy that defined his very _being_ , felt _wrong_. Everything about him, with that emotionless look of dulled focus, expression grim and serious, just felt so... _wrong_.

“H- Hey Chat.” She finally manages, making her presence known, slowly easing closer to him. Her voice dies down weakly in her throat as guilt comes crashing into her like a tidal wave. Up close, she can see his skin is a ghostly and sickly pale, cheeks pink and almost feverish. The skin beneath his eyes is dark and hollowed in, sharp cheekbones only accentuated that much more by his broken complexion. He looked so weak and vulnerable; _Fragile_. Like if she spoke too loudly or if she were to breathe too roughly, he’d shatter into a million pieces, like the gentlest of breezes could easily break him like a house of cards caught in the wind. She feels awful seeing him in such a state. He looked like someone had sucked five years off of his lifespan.

At least there was some color back in his face now, she realizes, slight relief coming over her. She remembers his skin had been as white as snow when he’d passed out in her arms just earlier.

Almost like the flip of a switch, as if someone had snapped and he’d done it on command, she physically watches as the gloomy expression on his face instantly evaporates, appearing as if it had never been there in the first place, as if that lifeless husk of her partner she had just seen, had never even existed. His eyes flick up to meet hers, gaze warm and welcoming. A natural brilliance and radiance suddenly emanates from him, like shooting stars and shimmering constellations across a clear, beautiful night sky. It was as if he had been able to totally change his whole aura in a matter of seconds.

Of everything, one thing hadn’t changed though; His eyes. They still reminded her of trekking through a forrest during a mid-summer afternoon. In or out of the suit, that hadn’t changed.

His eyes are _actually_ green, she muses, remembering how when she had briefly transformed with Plagg, the suit had forcibly turned her eyes a bright and neon, radioactive color. Silent, she can’t help but stare at him, _actually_ drinking in his features for what feels like the first time. Beyond his paled complexion, she couldn’t believe how different he looked; how much more _real_ and _human_ he felt being out of the suit. Something about seeing him like this reminded her that there was more to him than just being her annoying, flirty, dorky partner, he was more than just some larger-than-life superhero. Just like her, he had a life outside of the suit, and like her, maybe he even had a different side of himself that he showed when he wasn’t in the suit.

His features were smooth and soft, the dips and curves of his face in all the right places; small dimples caving in at the edge of his mouth as smiled gingerly at her, his jawline toned and sharp as if he’d been carved and sculpted by Michelangelo himself. His gaze was charming and friendly, but in a way that seemed _different_ from what she had gotten used to when he was in uniform. His gaze—his _eyes_ , were...somehow _softer_ and more _gentle_ , _innocent_ ; more like a harmless, fuzzy, cute bunny instead of the raw, wild, and untamed panther she normally saw. Had he always looked like this? She had spent nearly everyday with him for a few years now, how had she never noticed?

As she stares into his beautiful emerald eyes, nearly getting lost in that ocean of crisp evergreen, she can’t help but notice they’re a shade lighter than they normally are, an unfamiliar sense of innocence gleaming in them. The sight nearly catches her off guard. His dirty blond hair isn’t the wild and messy, tangled fray it normally is; Not one single strand is wind-strewn or out of place. Every golden strand appears to have fallen uncharacteristically neatly, each and every single one right where it belongs. His bangs and his hair frame his face almost like a halo, as if an angel had bestowed it upon him and had individually styled each and every lock perfectly.

She wracks her brain, nearly short-circuiting it from how hard the gears in her head are grinding, but she just can’t quite place why something about him just seems **_so_** familiar. What was it?? Why did he remind her of someone else so much? Who was Chat Noir behind the mask? Where had she seen that shade of green before and that dirty blond hair?

Chat meets her with a wide grin, showcasing a set of perfect, pearly white teeth. This snaps Ladybug back out of her thoughts, suddenly reminded that she had just been blankly staring at him for the last few moments. Her cheeks burn in embarrassment as she shoots a nervous, uneasy smile back.

As she takes in his expression, her smile falters. There it was again, he was still looking at her like she was the most important thing in the world to him. This brings her head back down out of the clouds, reminding her why they were in this situation in the first place. She didn’t deserve such a warm and loving gaze. Though, she can’t help but wonder how much of that smile, how much of that ecstatic gleam in his eyes, how much of that vibrant energy, is fake. She hadn’t missed the emptiness and the sense of defeat that had radiated off of him like a toxin, just mere moments ago. How much of this was pretend?

“M’lady!” Chat chirps happily, the grin on his face stretching even wider. “I’m glad you’re here! It was a little unnerving waking up to a bunch of unfamiliar faces.” He says with a nervous laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Oh! _By the way_ ~” he sing-songs, “I found out out my blood type. It actually _is_ O positive.” He says proudly, voice airy as he tilts his head ever-so-slightly in a subtle ‘I-told-you-so’, giving away the fact he was still a little out of it from all of the drugs. With a cocky shit-eating grin plastered across his face, he reaches up with one hand and playfully flicks the blood bag that hangs from the IV stand next to his bed. “Just for the record though, you’re still _my_ type.” He adds with a silky, charismatic voice, shooting her a flirty wink and some finger guns.

_How can he play it off like this is normal? How can he act so nonchalant about everything when just_ hours _ago, his life nearly slipped though my fingers? The blood loss nearly killed him._

She doesn’t miss how he had tried to hold back a wince when he had done that, still smiling through the pain just for her. Ladybug shifts awkwardly on her feet, rubbing one of her arms. Her eyes can’t help but be drawn to the marred and bruised flesh on his wrist where several of the IVs flow to. Even more guilt floods her system, stomach uneasy like a whole cluster of boulders had settled and shifted her organs. It only makes her feel worse when she identifies the tube that’s stained a deep garnet, dripping liquid, coppery, iron back into his veins.

Eyes suddenly lighting up in vicious concern, pupils blown wide, Chat blurts, “WAIT! Where’s Plagg? Is he okay?! Because he- I-“

She could visibly see the panic that races across his face as he’s trying to wrack his brain for memories he didn’t have. His hands are trembling and his eyes waver with a sense of dread and imminent fear.

“Don’t worry.” She says gently, a soft smile coming across her lips. “He’s going to be okay. I took him to Master Fu.”

She moves closer to him and seats herself in one of the chairs positioned around his bed. “So how are you feeling?” She asks concerned as she takes another glance up at all of the different bags hanging from his IV stand. It also hadn’t gone past her that he had kept a hand glued tightly against his side, tenderly cradling the spot where his injury was the whole time she had been in here.

“I mean...I guess I’m doing pretty well all things considered. It could be a lot better, could be a lot worse.” He replies optimistically with a shrug. “A lot better now that you’re here though.”

Without even thinking, she reaches in to embrace him, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest, burying her face into his shoulder. “You fucking clueless _idiot_.” She hiccups as tears begin to form in the corners of her eyes. Her breath hitches in the back of her throat as tears begin streaming down her cheeks. “I was so fucking scared I was gonna _lose you_.” Her grip on her partner grows tighter, her fingers clawing at the thin hospital gown, latching onto him almost as if she were afraid that if she were to loosen her grip for just a fragment of a second, he’d slip through her fingers.

The blond lets out a sharp yelp, a hiss escaping from his lips, his face scrunching in pain as his partner leans into him, her grip only getting tighter and tighter. “ _Ah_ \- L.B. that hur-“ he cuts himself off when he feels her small form trembling against his—shaking, quivering, and _scared_ , like a lost kitten in the rain calling blindly for its littermates.

_She’s shaking so badly_ , he notes to himself, worry immediately drawing up in his brows as his eyes are drawn to her tear-stained cheeks. _She must’ve been worried sick_. Squeezing his eyes shut, bearing the pain through half gritted teeth, he ignores how every nerve and fiber of his being screams to let go, to end the white hot agony that cascades down his flank; but he holds her just as tightly, wrapping his arms around her like the security blanket he knew she needed.

Right now, she was the only thing that mattered to him. The rest of the world around them felt stilled and irrelevant, like someone had forgotten to press play on the remote for the rest of the world. For all he was concerned, it was just him and his lady. He could bear the pain of going to Tartarus a million times over,

he could smile with the radiance of a thousand suns as long as she was around, he could tolerate anything, would _do anything_ , as long as it meant she was safe, as long as _she_ could keep smiling. He would never do anything to hurt her. She meant the world to him. She had showed him the light when there wasn’t any. She had been his calm after the storm. She had kept him grounded when everything else was falling apart around him. _She_ was the reason why he could be himself.

_7 billion beating hearts in this world, and I just had to fall for the one that doesn’t beat for me_ , he thinks bittersweetly to himself. Even if she didn’t feel the same way, it wouldn’t stop him from loving her; she showed him things and made him feel things he could never even imagine doing as Adrien. She was his reconcile; the one who had had the key and opened his small lockbox of a life he hadn’t even _realized_ he had been trapped suffocating in. He couldn’t even begin to describe how much he owed her for opening his eyes to a new world of color and warmth. Even if it wasn’t as her love-interest, he’d always stand by her side, no matter what.

“I’m sorry I made you worry, Bugaboo.” He whispers as he rubs small soothing circles into her back, just below her shoulder blades. Quietly stroking her soft dark hair with one hand, he holds her tighter, taking in her warmth, and her comforting scent of sweet vanilla.

Pulling back, his hands resting gently on her shoulders, gazing directly into her sparkling bluebell eyes, Chat then says without any hesitation or falter, “But I’d do it all again in a heartbeat if it meant I could keep you safe.”

Ladybug exhales a sharp and shaky breath, biting into her lips to try and keep it together, to try and keep herself from crying all over again. Looking into his eyes she knows he’s serious, knows that he means every word he says—but she doesn’t want him to. Just once, she wants those words to be a lie. She hated seeing him always getting hurt for her sake. What if something worse had happened?

At hearing a gentle knock at the door, swiping away the remnants of tears from her eyes, Ladybug instantly scrambles backwards away from Chat, away from his touch. She clears her throat and brushes some messy, stray strands of hair behind her ears, straightening her posture. She forces a tight-lipped smile across her face, regaining her composure. She doesn’t miss the way Chat visibly deflates; doesn’t miss the tangible hurt that flickers in his eyes at her gesture, the way he’s looking at her like she had just ripped his heart out and had stomped it into a million little pieces right in front of his eyes. She doesn’t miss how he draws his legs up and crosses his arms tightly against himself, almost as if he were trying to protect and close himself off, eyes downcast and dejected as he stares into his lap.

She wants to physically kick herself. Why had she done that? She’d done it purely on instinct without even thinking about it, and now she felt like the world’s biggest jerk. She hated how showing even an ounce of vulnerability as Ladybug had been drilled into her subconscious as a weakness; like a foreign pathogen that needed immediate eradication. All because she felt like she had to maintain her image, that she _had_ to be the strong and resounding Ladybug that everybody wanted her to be—that she wasn’t allowed to feel emotions or show pain like everybody else did. Chat was the only one who knew the truth—the truth that _countless_ times she’d crumbled under the pressure and let her emotions get the best of her; that she was just as human as anybody else.

“Sorry to interrupt.” A nurse calls gently as she enters the room with a soft knock, eying between the heroes, a clipboard in one hand and a small cart being dragged behind her with the other. She notices the suddenly awkward tension that’s thickly smothered in the air between the two heroes, but she decides not to address it. “Just came in to check on you, Mr. Noir.”

Ladybug sits awkwardly in the chair, spine ramrod straight as she fidgets anxiously with her hands. She felt like she could barely breath. The pure disappointment and sadness radiating off her partner nearly enough to suffocate her.

“How are you feeling?” The nurse begins as she pulls her small metal cart up alongside Chat’s bed. She briefly stops in front of one of the monitors that has dozens of dangling wires connected to it, jotting down numbers off one of the screens, clipboard in hand and pen scribbling away like she were deciphering an ancient script.

Chat’s quiet for a moment, eyes still drawn up in his lap, considering his words carefully. He opens his mouth to say something, but quickly closes it, changing his mind. He glances at one of the monitors for the briefest of seconds, and steals another glance at his partner. Finally looking up and meeting the nurse’s eyes, with a conjured bright smile, he manages, “I’m _feline_ _purr_ -ty great actually!” He tries not to let the smile falter when he proves his hands off his flank, reaching his arms out in front of him, stretching. No matter how badly his body ached at the small action, if there was anything modeling had taught him, the weaker and more vulnerable you felt, the bigger the act and the front that you had to put up.

The nurse briefly shoots the blond a quizzical and skeptical look but understanding quickly passes through her features once she catches the underlying plea in Chat’s eyes for her to play along.

With a smooth and steady tone, the nurse then says, “Alright, well it’s always good to be optimistic.” She chirps with a light-hearted smile. Opening up a plastic case on the cart, she then glances up and briefly meets Chat’s eyes. “I’m giving you a small dose of morphine now to help with the pain since it seems the painkillers from earlier have started to wear off.” She says without looking at Chat as she begins prepping the syringe.

_Morphine?_ , Ladybug thinks guiltily, as she eyes Chat’s side, beginning to wonder just exactly how much pain her partner must be bound to be enduring right now.

The nurse then gently thumbs the end of the syringe, emptying the contents of it into an open-mouthed IV tube connected to the blond. Afterwards, the nurse steals a glance over at Ladybug, noticing the tired dark circles under her red, puffy eyes and how the girl’s smile is worn and near lifeless, barely pulled together, almost as if she were a puppet on strings. Currently, nothing about the scarlet clad girl radiated the oh-so-familiar ‘ _Fierce_ and _Un-defeatable_ Ladybug, heroine of Paris’ energy that she was known for. She just looked like a pitiable girl who needed a year’s worth of sleep and the world’s weight in cookies. Her weak and unkept appearance were enough to vouch for the fact that the poor girl had probably worried herself sick over her partner.

After no more than a few quick seconds of analysis on Ladybug, she finally understands. The nurse assumes that Chat doesn’t quite wanna rub salt in a still-open wound just yet and end up accidentally worsening the heroine’s guilt.

The nurse spares another look between the two heroes, a small sigh leaving her lips. “I’ll give you two a few minutes.” Turning to Chat as she makes her way out, she says, “I’ll come back a little later with your next dosage and a new change of bandages. Just press the call button if you need anything.”

With that, the two heroes sit in awkward silence, only the steady, rhythmic beeping of the heartbeat sensor to fill the air, to fill the almost deafening silence, to fill the space between their empty hearts.

“I’m...sorry Chat.” Ladybug starts slowly. “I didn’t mean to- I shouldn’t have pulled away- I just-“

“Don’t worry, it’s fine.” Chat says with a small smile, but there’s still audible hurt in his voice. “I know it’s not easy being put up on such a high pedestal.” He says with a nervous laugh, managing a weak grin. “It gets to the best of us sometimes.”

Ladybug stares at him for a moment, mind racing as she’s reading into things again that she shouldn’t be. Of course, he was a hero of Paris too and also had an image of his own to uphold (just as she did), but something told her that the small comment had been rooted deeper than that. If anything, Chat _never_ seemed restricted by his alter ego, he was always so reckless and carefree when he was wearing his mask, seemingly not bound by any chains and not bound by anyone’s rules other than his own—but she could hear the truth and the real grit of pain and understanding in what he had said, the true weight of his words settled beneath his sugary-sweet tone. She can’t help thinking about it, and almost finds her lips asking ‘ _Who are you really?’_ , but stops herself short when she remembers her own personal vow to keep their civilian lives private.

Shifting slightly, Chat extends his arm forward, fist clenched, and his head tilted slightly to the side with a dopey grin stretched up on his face. With a slight lull to his voice, Chat then says, “ _Y’knowww_ , we _did_ still defeat that akuma.”

Caught off guard, pulling her out of her jumbled thoughts, a small smile lights up Ladybug’s face when her ocean eyes settle on his outstretched first. “Yeah, I guess we did.” She says contently as her gaze dwells for just a few moments longer on his ungloved hand. His bare skin—not tight, dark, leather gloves. Neatly trimmed and shiny fingernails—not tacky, acrylic, adhesive claws. He was a real person, not just some mangy, scrubby looking cat who got way too into cosplay. She stares at his hand for a few seconds too long, eyes drawn to his slender and delicate fingers.

“ _C’mon,_ you know you want to,” he coos airily, eyelids heavy as he playfully waves his clenched fist around. “You can’t leave me hangin’ Bugaboo.” He continues, beginning to pout.

She could already see his eyelids drooping, heavy with sleep, his true self seemingly only half there—more bubbly giggles and exhaustion than anything else. He was half slumped over like he could conk out any second now. The morphine must be beginning to kick in, she figures. Though, she hadn’t missed how almost this whole time, Chat had been gently nursing the wound on his side, hand constantly hovering around and gently clasping at his flank whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

Despite that though, a warm smile comes across her lips with a laugh as she balls up her own hand. They had both made it out, and that’s what matters, she supposes.

“How could I resist, Kitty. We can’t call it official if we don’t!”

Tired emerald eyes meeting weary bluebell for two heartbeats too many, faces flushed warm as hues of pink dance beneath their cheekbones, both reach their hands out, bumping fists, calling out triumphantly in unison, “Pound it!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be completely honest, I’ve actually had this chapter done for quite some time, but I wasn’t happy with it so I took some time and did a lot of editing and manipulating to it from the initial draft. I’m still not entirely pleased with this chapter, but I figured I might as well go ahead and post it. If you enjoyed, please, please let me know! Feedback keeps me motivated! :)


	3. "It's Just the Drugs"

[ _Hey Father, I hope you're having a good time in London!]_

Adrien chews on the inside of his cheek, mulling over his words, fingers hovering over the keyboard, swirling above the letters as he takes in a slow, almost pain-staking breath that spends way too long swirling in his chest. He purses his lips, unconsciously chewing on the bottom one as his eyes dance meekly around the screen trying—hoping—that the right set of words will come to his brain. He's having trouble putting his thoughts together, having trouble forming anything other than three word sentences. Continuing, watching as the best of his half-baked thoughts fill up the text bar on the message screen, he then types out and adds: _  
_

_[I got into a bit of an accident, so I'm in the hospital recovering right now. It's nothing to worry about though! I'm perfectly fine!_ ]

_Nothing to worry about?_ , Adrien thinks to himself as he rereads the line over again. Who was he kidding. He wasn't even fooling himself with that one. He felt like a stale, crumbly, croissant three weeks past its expiration date; he was sure he looked the part too.

Adrien exhales sharply, shaking his head as he erases the whole text, staring deep in thought at the message screen to his Father. He was straight back at square one again—for the seventh time in the last five minutes. A now empty text line glares back at him, the small blinking keyboard cursor seemingly taunting him as it blinks in and out of existence. Honestly, right in this moment, he wishes that he too, could just blink out of existence for a moment, just a _single_ moment, to clear all of the static that hangs heavy in his head, to give him a moment to just slow down and figure out what the hell was going on and to let him figure out what the best course of action was to handle the situation. Everything was just going so quickly—too fast for him to keep up, it had all happened in the blink of an eye; his thoughts, his mind, his body were all exhausted and _reeling_ trying to wrap around what exactly had happened in the last 48+ hours. Everything was a blurred mess, and he was having trouble keeping track of what actually happened and what he had hallucinated, since he'd been high off his ass on painkillers for the last day or so.

He turns his phone off, a loud groan escaping past his lips as he dramatically throws his head back against the fortress of pillows piled up behind him. He leans back and drapes an arm over his face, resting it neatly in the crook of his elbow. Rinse and repeat, it was the same cycle. How many more times would he have to go back through this same cycle until he found the perfect words to say to his Father? He'd lost count of how many times he'd second-guessed himself and erased a half-thought-out text, only to think of another way to more delicately reword it moments later; Doomed to repeat the very same process over and over again because he kept overanalyzing all of the little things. Like was he using enough commas? Was his grammar proper enough? Too many sentences? Too little sentences? Was there a better synonym for a particular word?

His throat constricts and he's finding it hard to swallow, like someone's jamming a tube down his neck. The more he thinks about how to break the situation to his father without compromising his alter ego, the harder and harder he's finding it to breathe. He's also overly aware of how painfully dry his mouth has gone, like sandpaper drifting in the middle of a scorching desert. The more and more he thinks about it, the more and more dire he realizes his situation is—Just how badly everything could backfire and blow up in his face if he didn't play his cards right.

Suddenly, he's sweating, and he can hear his pulse hammering up into his temples, heartbeat getting faster and faster and louder and louder—like his heart was throwing some sort of last-ditch parade with a fireworks extravaganza before it offed itself for good, as a final send-off. He tries to steady his breathing, tries to even out his shallow and frantic breaths, but his lungs aren't listening to him. He keeps on trying to gulp up air like a fish out of water. Gasping. Choking. Suffocating. He can see his surroundings closing in on him, walls getting closer and closer with every breath. He felt trapped. Constricted. Confined.

What was he gonna do?! What had he been thinking?! He was an _idiot_! He couldn't just come outright and _tell_ Gabriel he had gotten really hurt and sent to the hospital with more stitches in his side than he could count on both of his hands! The designer would _freak out_ and all hell would break loose—it was a surefire path to suicide for crying out loud! How fucking stupid was he? Telling Gabriel would only raise even more questions from the designer that Adrien was sure he wouldn't be able to come up with answers to.

If he told Gabriel, surely the designer would book the first flight back to Paris PRONTO, demanding Adrien to spew a name, to tell him who was responsible for marring his son's ' _perfect_ ' body, threatening a lawsuit before Adrien could even _begin_ to come up with some half-baked excuse. If Nathalie or Gorilla caught wind of his injury, circumstances would be equally as bad, since it was a _given_ at least one of them would rat him out to his Father, if not both of them. He'd instantly be revoked of his newly acquired freedom.

More recently, since he was older and 'more responsible' now, he'd been trusted with going out on his own, free to go and do whatever he wanted without Gorilla or Nathalie breathing down his neck every step of the way. He certainly didn't want to lose something that he had spent years working towards getting—years of being sure he kept on his best behavior, years of holding his tongue, years of smiling through pain, years of being sure not to stretch Gabriel's boundaries too thin. He couldn't- no, _wouldn't_ , go back to living in a birdcage, and he certainly wouldn't go back to being a trained animal at the beckoned call of his father, leash and all, around his neck. He was his own person. There was no way he could bring himself to revert back to living that way. After seeing the world in bright, luminous, vivid color, he couldn't go back to black and white despair.

He'd contemplated just simply not telling the designer—with Gabriel being out of town for the next week or so due to a high-end fashion event ongoing just a little ways across the water. But that still left the issue of Nathalie and Gorilla. No matter how he picked apart the situation, there was always some sort of loose end that would come back to bite him in the ass if he didn't handle this _somehow_.

Tangling Ladybug up further in his own dilemma was out of the question; he didn't want to drag her further into this mess and also didn't want to inadvertently make her feel any more guilty than she already did. He felt bad about making _her_ feel bad. He certainly didn't wanna make things worse between them.

This whole situation was an absolute nightmare. Something like this was bound to happen eventually he supposes, (especially given his luck), but that still didn't make things any easier.

_Oh fuck_ , he realizes, a wave of ice rolling down his spine as he's hit with a jarring burst of reality. He runs his hands anxiously though his hair as he remembers the stitches and just how nasty and deep the wound on his side had _really_ been. Since the surgery had been on-the-spot, without much prep-time, the stitches and incisions had been rough and calloused given the urgency. In no way, shape, or form had the handiwork of the surgeons been delicate or pretty. The emergency operation had left a nasty aftermath on his flank, flesh bruised in a cascading ripple of bluish-blacks, purples, and yellow-greens. Not to mention, the length and width of the wound catered for larger and more unsightly stitches, making him look like he was _at least_ a quarter Frankenstein. What the fuck was he going to do about the inevitable scar the injury was going to leave?—let alone trying to do modeling and photoshoots. Foundation only went so far at covering stuff up. He should know, having had to cover up small scrapes and wounds from post-patrol battles, or, nights when Gabriel got particularly drunk and feisty.

His father would probably _kill him_ for being reckless and marring up his body and ruining chances for future photo ops. If there was anything Gabriel prided Adrien over, it was his charismatic and devilish good looks; his body was practically the cover image for the Agreste brand now. He could already see Gabriel's wild animalistic eyes boring into him now, eyes that looked out of place, ones that looked like they shouldn't belong on his father's face (but were somehow planted there anyway). Piercing eyes that burned with a fury warmer than hell itself, glaring daggers that held the weight of a thousand years worth of anger and disappointment. He could already hear Gabriel's firm and calloused harsh tone now, lashing into him and scolding him, tongue sharp and rigged against him, ready to slice at all the flaws Adrien had and all the disappointment he brought with him to the Agreste family name. Words that stung like a whip, cracking into his very mentality and his very being. Drunken slurs and unsightly staggering being the only things to remind Adrien that this version of the designer wasn't truly his father, whenever the man drank himself into such a state.

Hearing the news, Adrien was damn near certain his father would drink every bottle of alcohol in Paris dry, or at least, every bottle in the liquor cabinet. They would both be painfully aware and know _just exactly_ how devastating a blow this would be to his modeling career. Ever since the disappearance of his mom, Gabriel seemingly only drank more and more, drowning out his problems in alcohol rather than actually trying to tackle anything. He could already feel ice-cold, calloused hands squeezing and tightening against his neck.

Just the mere thought of it makes his breath clog up in his throat and makes knots bubble up in his stomach. His eyes flash open as his breathing only gets more shallow and frantic, his head woozy with the burst of colors swirling around him, lights blinding him. It's too bright. Too bright. Too bright. Too bright.

He gasps for air, hands clawing uselessly at his throat, trying to push off the phantom hands around his neck that aren't really there. He can't breathe.

_Make it stop. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts._ He thinks helplessly as white hot agony flares up and down his chest and all down his legs, all the way to the tips of his toes.

Pupils blown wide, in a panicked frenzy, he snaps up and throws himself off of the hospital bed, every nerve in his body screaming in pain as he hits the floor _hard_ , knocking what little oxygen he can manage, out of his lungs. Raggedly, he manages the strength to pull himself to his feet. His legs wobble like he's never learned to walk before and his knees threaten to buckle beneath him any second, threatening to collapse and fold in like a drawbridge with too much weight in the middle.

On too weak legs that can't even support his weight, with his half-state of mind, he somehow thinks to snatch the pole of his IV stand, limply dragging it behind him as he staggers towards the bathroom, his vision doubling, tripling, and quadrupling in a dizzying array of colors. He can barely tell which way is up and which way is down.

His chest is tight and it hurts to breathe like there's a vice tightened against his lungs. He helplessly rasps out sharp and shallow breaths, desperately sucking air in and out; but it's like every drop of oxygen he breathes in gets clogged up somewhere down the pipeline, just before it reaches his lungs.

His heartbeat is hammering up into his temples, his pulse reverberating through every nerve in his body. He can feel it pounding in his fingertips, quivering through his legs, roaring into his ears. It's so unbearably and gut-wrenchingly _loud_ he can't bring himself to focus on anything else; everything else is white noise; everything else bleeds into the background. All he can hear is the thrashing of his heart, like it was counting down the moments until it exploded, like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off.

He feels sick. He feels _sick_.

Before he even has the chance to register what's going on, everything goes topsy-turvy; he can't even register which way is up and which way is down with the way his vision swirls and blurs. Stumbling, before he even has the chance to process it, he's on ground, sitting with his knees awkwardly splayed, his legs having given out under his weight, his brain sending mixed signals like it couldn't tell the difference between his right and left feet.

He hugs tightly at his abdomen and squeezes his eyes shut as his stomach lurches forward. No butterflies here, only tangled knots bubbling and bubbling up in his stomach. Right now, the pain in his side is practically nonexistent, he doesn't even recognize it, his brain doesn't even acknowledge the sharp stabbing pains that trace up his flank from his careless movements on his still-fresh wound.

His breath hitches and gets caught up in his throat as he stifles a gag, already feeling bile burn at the back of his throat, the sour taste of acid already on his tongue. Suddenly, his mind's blank and he's an empty husk, not even in control of himself, his body moving on autopilot. All he can do is sit back and watch as his body takes the wheel and reacts on its own.

Instincts kicking in, his body sways and drags itself in front of the toilet, nearly knocking his IV stand over with the sudden surge forward. He frantically scrambles to bring his hands up on either side of the porcelain bowl, nearly ripping out an IV plug out of his arm in the process. Though, a jerked-out IV is the least of his worries right in this current moment. Gripping the edges like his life depends on it, he holds on with trembling fingers, fingers that go white from how hard he's pressing against the porcelain, fingers that are doing everything they can to keep him sitting upright.

Hacking up what little food he had managed to keep down earlier, he empties the contents of his stomach. He's left sick on air as his trembling body continues to fight him, stomach continuing to lurch and roll forward like sea waves during a storm. He's left hunched and curled over the porcelain bowl, dry heaving as there's nothing left in his stomach to bring up, nothing but frothy bile and acid.

.

.

.

His stomach finally having settled down some, and his breathing and his heart rate easing back to normal, he collapses and gently falls back against the wall. Exhausted, he leans his head back and stares up at the dim, yellowish ceiling light, letting out a shaky exhale as he brings the sleeve of his hospital gown up, wiping off the corners of his mouth.

God, how did he even get here? This was pathetic. He didn't even know if he had the strength to stand. What would Ladybug think if she had just seen that whole pitiful ordeal? _A self-induced panic attack_. Or maybe it was the after-effects of all the drugs that they were pumping into him like it was his lifeblood. Or maybe he was just plain spiraling out of control—at this point, it was game of roulette, even he didn't even know.

After a few more silent moments of just resting on the floor with his back slumped against the wall and his head buried in the crook of his elbow, he finally weakly brings himself to his feet. His steps are wobbly as his knees threaten to buckle beneath him again. The strength in his legs waver, but he manages to support himself against the counter, carefully edging his way over to the sink, slowly.

He slides the fake Chat Noir mask off his face, limply throwing it down onto the counter. For a moment, he supports himself with his hands, harshly pushing into either side of the counter to hold up his weight, arms separated by the basin of the sink. He hangs his head, as he holds himself up on wobbling arms, dirty blond bangs falling into his eyes, strands of hair clinging to his forehead from feverish sweat. Flicking the sink on, he's quiet and somber as the water swirls and swishes, hissing under its vapor-y breath.

Letting the frigid sink-water just gush from the faucet, listening as it crackles down the drain, he just stands there staring at himself as the water runs, taking in all of these foreign features. Who was this person staring in the mirror back at him? Had this been what Ladybug saw when she came to visit him the other day? Was this the Chat Noir she pulled out of the gutter and had to carry bridal style? He looked _terrible_. All of the nurses had prided him on how color had returned to his cheeks and how he was looking so much better; but if _this_ was 'color returning back to his skin' then hell, he must've been cast as the next lead character in a Tim Burton movie with the saturation only three notches from being in black and white.

His eyes look hallowed and sunken in like he hadn't slept for three weeks, his skin was a sickly pale and his hair was an absolute frayed and tangled mess. Then there were all of these tubes jutting out of arms like he was some sort of walking-experiment, the delicate flesh down both his arms bruised in an intricate swirl of purples and bluish-grays. Not to mention, the too-airy hospital gown that's draped loosely around his form did wonders to make him look even more delicate and broken, like he was a breath away from falling apart. Like he was a flower that had been stepped on; trampled; Squashed; but was somehow still _just barely_ hanging onto its withering petals by a wisp, by a random spider web strand just barely keeping it from withering into dust.

A terrified, but sick curiosity nips at the back of his brain as he eyes skims down the rest of his body in the mirror, down the folds and wrinkles of the hospital gown. Gingerly, timidly, he pokes at his flank, pokes at the place where his hospital gown juts out ever-so-slightly due to the rolls of gauze and bandages wrapped around his abdomen underneath. His hand recoils instantly and he hisses in sharp pain, doubled over as he clutches and cradles his side, biting into his cheeks like they were slabs of leather, eyes watering as he does everything he can to stop himself from letting out an audible yelp.

" _Fuck_..." he whispers quietly to himself under a shaky breath, squeezing his eyes shut, jaw clenched.

Sucking in a harsh breath through his teeth, with a pause of hesitance, he grips at the hem of the gown, gingerly edging and rolling it up. Delicately, he balls the fabric up in his hands, exposing more and more skin with each roll. Without even realizing, he's holding his breath in dreaded anticipation. His palms are shaky and sweating. He stands like a deer caught in headlights as he reaches the first flecks of gauze and bandages. Pulling the gown up further, his bones turn into cement and his hands tremble and quiver like punctured worms curled onto a fishing hook. His heart is pounding into his ears as he swallows thickly. His eyes are hyper-fixated on the few dark speckles and splots of blood that had seeped through the gauze, drawing attention to themselves like a candle burning bright in an abyss of darkness; like a desolate lighthouse against the barren white sea of the rest of his bandages. How bad was the wound? How nasty was the damage?

Did he dare to assess it? Dare to see what new scar was buried in the pit of the beast, to see what new demon he'd have to live with? Dare to potentially send himself spiraling into another panic attack?

This would be the first time he'd be seeing it with a _half_ -clear mind. He'd been pumped so full of drugs lately, he couldn't quite remember what he'd made up and imagined and what was actually real. He just _couldn't_ remember. The pain was real at least, so there was that much he was sure of. Quite honestly, he didn't even really remember how he got to the hospital in the first place, it was a mess of hazy bits and pieces: The next thing he knew, he had just woken up dazed beyond belief, in a hospital bed and a shit ton of IV tubes jammed into his arms, with Ladybug at his side peering at him like he was the most fragile and delicate thing in the world.

Standing with his fingers hovering just a few mere centimeters above the edges of the gauze pad, he stands with bated and conflicted breath. He grits his teeth. After mulling it back and forth over in his mind, he finally works up the courage to convince himself to peel back the bandages and have a look at the wound himself.

He grips a loose edge between his fingers, rubbing at the fraying threads with his fingertips. Anxiety ripples through every vein in his body. He feels like he could spontaneously combust with how many pent-up nerves he has.

_Okay Adrien_ , he thinks to himself, letting out a deep breath to try and push out some of the tension in his chest. _It's just a bandaid. A giant bandaid._ He breathes shakily, as he tries to plant the image in his head, trying not to overthink this too much and send himself spiraling into another panicked episode. _Nice and quick. Just- Just rip off like a bandaid._

_Okay. Okay. It'll be okay. It can't be that bad. Just rip it off in..._

_Three..._

He swallows thickly, running his tongue over dry, cracked, lips.

_Two..._

He lets out one final shaky breath, gritting his teeth bracing himself mentally for whatever wicked stitch-work was behind these bandages.

_One..._

Squeezing his eyes shut, grip tight against the fabric, finally mentally and physically ready—

**BANG. BANG. BANG.**

He nearly jumps out of his skin, heart fluttering up into his throat and plummeting back into his stomach. He nearly stumbles backwards and falls as frantic and heavy knocks pound against the bathroom door. His hands fly down to his sides immediately, dropping the edges of the bandages and the hem of his hospital gown. His heart was hammering into his chest and up into his ears like a fucking freight train.

"Mr. Noir?!" A concerned and muffled voice calls through the heavy door with another desperate round of knocking.

Adrien's pupils are blown wide in recognition, as he stifles a gasp. One of his nurses. A jolt of adrenaline shoots up his spine when he catches a glance at himself in the mirror. He frantically feels around his eyes with hands. _Shit_. His mask. He had taken off his mask.

Fuck! Where was his mask?

"Y- YeAh?" Adrien replies back anxiously, too quickly, his voice cracking like he was a prepubescent middle-schooler, two octaves two high. Desperately, he spins in a frantic circle trying to find the fake costume mask, trying to figure out where it went after he had carelessly tossed it off. After a full five seconds, he finally spots a speck of black on the floor. He all but dives for it, working to snap it back onto his face before the nurse or anyone else barged into the room.

"Are you okay in there? I was out doing my patrols and checking in on my ward of patients when one of the aids at the nurse station alerted me that all of your sensors had been disconnected!"

"I- I'm... okay." Adrien replies slowly. "I was just- Sorry."

"I'm gonna come in, is that okay?" The nurse asks gently.

"Uh- " he glances around nervously, quickly rubbing his hair down with the palms of his hands and brushing the wrinkles out his hospital gown. "Uhm- Y- YeAh that's fine."

Seconds later the knob on the door twists and the heavy door swings open, the nurse peering inside as she stands in the doorway. Her eyes meet his for a moment, but his breath catches in his throat when he notices how they instantly flick to his forearms and then to the floor like she was analyzing a crime scene in her head.

Taken aback, he follows her gaze, confused. First off, he suddenly notices some of the IV's that had been in his arm had somehow gotten ripped out in the whole frenzy of everything that had just happened, thin rivulets of blood running down his arms and dripping down his wrists. On the off-white floor, lies his toppled IV stand, fluid bags scattered all over the tiles, some of them leaking out their contents onto the ground. Clear, plastic tubes lay coiled and tangled up in a frayed mess, like a pair of wired headphones that you had left in your pocket for just a bit too long.

His cheeks burn in embarrassment, heat flaring all across his face as he awkwardly and unconsciously slings his arms behind him. He's suddenly hyper-aware of how slick and sticky his hands are from the blood. His eyes are glued firmly to the floor in shame as he hears her blow out a deep breath through her nose. He awkwardly shifts his weight, so very, very, _very_ much aware of how much of a mess he's made, how much extra work he's created and burdened this poor nurse with. He feels awful and downright sick with embarrassment.

"S-Sorry, I didn't mean to-" Chat squeezes his eyes shut, fully expecting for her to be furious, for her to scold him, for her to be angry at him for making things more complicated for her. He expects, no, _waits_ for her to go off on him, just like Gab-

"Are you feeling okay?" She asks softly, not even a hint of judgement or anger in her caring tone. Not one ounce of malice.

Chat's taken aback, his eyes widening in utter shock, his lips parting. _What...?_

Raising his head meekly, he risks glancing up at her, muscles tight as he works up the confidence to meet her eyes, to study her face and take in her expression. His body loosens and eases as he sees the genuine concern and comfort that emanates from her soft eyes. He opens his mouth to say something, but no words come out. He chews on his bottom lip nervously.

She holds her hand out, gesturing for one of his arms. Hesitantly, he shuffles it from behind his back and straightens it out in front of him, letting her see it. Gingerly, her gloved fingers trace up his forearm, looking him over as she gently rubs at the areas where his IV's had been jerked out. When he winces, she shoots him a sympathetic look.

As she begins to turn over and look at his other arm she then starts more seriously, "So what happened?"

"I... I wasn't feeling well, and I tried to make my way to the bathroom," he starts, pausing for a moment, for a half-second too long. "But, I was really light headed and dizzy... and... I got sick." He says, deciding to only tell her half the truth.

Suddenly realizing, the fact of the matter dawning on him, his words setting off an alarm bell in his head, heat corrodes across his face in mortification. He awkwardly sidesteps over to the toilet and flushes it, grimacing as he watches the the brunt of his little episode swirl down the drain. He clenches his jaw, a frown tugging heavy at his lips as he finds himself unable to meet her eyes again. "Sorry, for making things more difficult for you," he apologizes again. "This isn't exactly my _purr_ -oudest moment..."

"Hey, it's okay." She says gently, meeting him with a warm smile. "I'm here to help you get better, not judge you." The nurse says compassionately as she sets the metal IV stand back up properly, collecting the bags from the floor. "C'mon, let's get you fixed up back up. We gotta make sure you get outta here with all nine lives." She jokes as she drags the frame of the IV stand behind her, back into the main room. She tosses the waste into the biohazard bin as she continues towards his hospital bed. She pats the mattress instructing him to sit back down. "I'll insert some new IV's, change your bandages, and get some new sterile fluid drips to hook up to your IV stand."

Tentatively, he climbs back onto the mattress, watching wordlessly as she reattaches all of the vital monitors and sensors back up to him.

"Nausea is a pretty common side effect for a lot of people when they're first put on morphine, since some people's bodies are less tolerant of it than others. This was probably just your body rejecting and reacting negatively to the medication."

"Y- yeah, of course." Chat replies quietly with a small voice, half-heartedly. "I'm sure it was just the drugs." He trails off with a forced smile.

"...just the drugs." He mumbles quietly to himself with a small, pathetic, laugh.

But he knows that's not true. His issues were rooted much deeper than just his body reacting negatively to painkillers. Though, the less he said, the better he realizes. Ladybug wanted them to keep their identities hidden, so that's what he was going to do. He didn't intend on outing himself or straining his family name anytime soon.

Having an alter ego made the matter so so _so_ much more complicated. Much more complicated than this nurse could ever come to realize. Much more complicated than _just drugs_.

Whatever happens from here, he realizes that going forward, he needed to be more careful; that he couldn't afford to have another breakdown like that and lose control. He needed to plan his next steps accordingly to make sure he played his cards right and didn't make another wrong move. The situation could've been costly had things played out differently. Time was running out. And _quickly_. He only had so long until people started asking questions, until people realized he wasn't keeping up his appearances as Adrien. Until Nathalie and Gorilla started asking questions. Until his _father_ started asking questions.

He glances out the window at the Parisian skyline as the nurse gets to work on treating the IV's on his arms. Emerald eyes look out at all of the fancy and beautifully decorated high-rise buildings, and off at the Eiffel Tower gleaming in the distance in all its glory. For the briefest of moments, he wonders if Ladybug is out there somewhere, scouring the streets for evil. Or was she curled up at home, where ever that may be, taking some well-deserved rest, still recovering from the aftershock, like he was?

Even all things considered, he wouldn't of rather had this scenario play out any other way. He had kept his partner safe, and that was what mattered. He'd never wish anything like this upon the heroine. No matter what, he'd do it all over again in a heartbeat for her; even if it meant he were living in a nightmare himself.

He scoffs to himself, a gentle hum resonating in his chest _, So how are you going to get yourself out of this one, Agreste?_

He grins silently in amusement to himself as he glances down at the silver ring nestled against his skin, the flat metal band resting flush against his finger. He really did have the worst luck, didn't he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the slow updates! I promise I'm trying lol but things are a bit hectic with school. Anyways, thanks for reading and please let me know what you thought about this chapter! Kudos and comments are much appreciated!


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